The report is entitled "Assessing the Homeland Security Implications of Publicly Available Geospatial Information".

Here is a summary of the report from the preface:

This report assesses the homeland security implications of publiclyavailable geospatial data and information. Specifically, it seeks toframe the analytical issues concerning whether and how this type ofdata and information that is available from U.S. government sourcescan be exploited by terrorists and other adversaries seeking to attackU.S. critical infrastructure and other key homeland locations. Wegive particular attention to surveying and characterizing these federaldata and information within the broader context of diverse publicandprivate-sector producers of potentially relevant geospatial information.

This is a big report...but I think it touches on a critical issue for GIS enthusiasts in all parts of the world and I hope to read it at some point.

Monday, March 02, 2009

The USGS maintains a web page that can be used to search a database of place names, both for the United States and places around the world. The web page is one part of the Geographic Name Information System (GNIS). The USGS also maintains a database for the GNIS. You can download the data from this database for all 50 of the states in the United States as a single zip file, or for just a single state.

I just skimmed the article, but I plan on reading it in more detail. This is an interesting topic. A common method of watermarking vector GIS data is adding "fake" features, like road segments that don't really exist. But I have often thought that there has got to be better ways of placing a watermark. The tricky part is embedding a watermark that can resist translation, rotation, and scaling. (Or even reprojection to a new coordinate system.) This rules out using any coordinate geometry to record the watermark.

Perhaps using the topology of features that remain intact despite translation, rotation, and scaling would be a valid way to watermark vector GIS data without "polluting" the dataset with fake features.

I'll have to chew on this some more. Might be cool to add a vector GIS data watermarking plug-in to OpenJUMP.